New Horizons in the History of the Crusades

I was unaware of the somewhat dismaying recent trend of Crusades scholarship that emphasizes the “Holy” part of the “Holy War” equation. Unlike Steven Runciman and other earlier historians, some of these scholars are rather sympathetic to the Crusades and the Church of that time. To read this passage by Thomas F. Madden, author of The Crusades: An Illustrated History, is depressing:

Thomas Asbridge’s Pope Urban II, much like Erdmann’s, is a schemer whose primary motivation is to exert his own power. There was, Asbridge contends, no compelling external reason for the First Crusade. One would think the Muslim conquest of fully two-thirds of the Christian world might engender some bad feeling.

Given the frequency with which Tyerman refers to medieval anti-Jewish pogroms, one might well conclude that the purpose of the Crusades was to annihilate Jews. Indeed, he uses these massacres as evidence of the brutal nature of the Crusades and the success of the Church in whipping up hatred for “the other.” Nowhere does he mention that these attacks on Jews were isolated incidents in direct violation of Church law and condemned by churchmen and secular leaders alike. Anti-Jewish attacks were seen as a perversion of crusading, and people like St. Bernard of Clairvaux worked hard to keep them from happening at all.

Thomas F. Madden, “Crusaders and Historians”

[Note the passive “were seen” in that last sentence.]

That would be the same Bernard of Clairvaux who said the following:

‘They shall either be converted or wiped out.’ So Bernard of Clairvaux announced the extension of Jerusalem indulgences to the summer campaign of 1147 against the pagan Slavs, or Wends, between the rivers Elbe and Oder. This decision, reached at the Diet of Frankfurt in March 1147, set the tone for perhaps the most radical and effective association of holy war and territorial expansion.

Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades

The nuanced and skeptical Tyerman does maintain that colonialization was not the only or even the greatest motivation for the Crusades, but herefuses to jump to Madden’s redemptive stance. And, belying Madden’s whitewash of the Church’s anti-semitism, he cites the words of Bernard and other clergy:

Overt anti-Semitism dominated the academy of western Christendom in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, often expressed by those unmoved by practical or communal resentment or fear. Abbot Peter the Venerable of Cluny argued a point very close to Radulf’s; if it is a meritorious act to fight enemies of Christianity in distant lands why are Jews allowed to live undisturbed in the heart of Christendom? If Muslims were detestable, how much more were the Jews? In profiting from Christians, even the church, through usury, they polluted Christendom. Abbot Peter was careful to follow the theologically orthodox line that Jews should not be killed but, he insisted, they should be punished as enemies of Christ.

Bernard of Clairvaux, ‘a decent priest’ in Rabbi Ephraim’s grateful memory, while rejecting simple and violent analogies, lacked sympathy or more than legal tolerance, stating:

The Jews are not to be persecuted, killed or even put to flight… The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us always of what our Lord suffered. They are dispersed all over the world so that by expiating their crime they may be everywhere living witnesses of our redemption. Under Christian princes they endure a hard captivity… when the time is ripe all Israel shall be saved [i.e. converted]. But those who die before will remain in death. If Jews are utterly wiped out, what will become of our hope for their promised salvation, their eventual conversion?

Christopher Tyerman, God’s War: A New History of the Crusades

While Bernard took a softer line than most, the general view, at best, was that “killing” was a perversion of crusading, but other attacks on Jews were acceptable.

Dismaying.